Haiku #373

My zone is my home 

I mark its borders daily 

Its owner's a beast 

Biblical History Mystery

Don't forget that the first gospel to be written down, Mark, wasn't scribed until about 50 years after Jesus supposedly died. You would also be wise to recall that Jesus was a Jew and that it was the converted, Grecian-educated Paul who changed the focus from God to his proclaimed son, Jesus, and in so doing gave birth to Christianity (the Cliff Notes version).

                                            ¥

There's more than one mixup in the New Testament (not to mention the contradictions) one of which is that King Herod of Judea died before Jesus was allegedly born.

                                              ¥

I can't believe how supposedly educated priests, ministers, presbyters, whatever, can claim with a straight face that there is evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and of His taking the Heavenly Elevator. First they have to prove that an historical Jesus was born, grew up and did some pretty funky stuff. Then, after He died, He came alive again, did more stuff and then disappeared into the sky (which was so amazing that nobody at the time thought that it was significant enough to bother writing down). After the ascension you have the tricky task of proving that Jesus had STOPPED existing (in a material sense). In fact all of the events of the life and very existence of Jesus were so amazing that it took from about 50-200 years for the four canonical gospels to be written. That is like dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and it didn't show up in a newspaper until this morning. And that time gap only gets us to after the first gospel ("Mark") was set down.

                                              ¥

Theology is rarely theological.

                                               ¥

(A Rant…)

Herod the Great's father may indeed have been a king for he was certainly an aristocrat, but not in Judea. The Biblical Herod could not have had anything to do with Jesus as Herod died in the spring of 4 BCE. But the Bible is a compendium of mythology shaped to serve a particular path of theology and not a history text. It's rife with multiple different accounts of the same event, self-contradictions, historical errors and, most misleadingly, it's been censored and abridged to suit the goals of the Church hierarchy over past generations. The piles of scripture that the early Church elders burned were vastly greater than the arbitrary pittance that they authorised and deemed fitting for their needs. To add insult to injury, they also burned all of the books that they could gather and so destroyed the recorded knowledge of mankind irregardless of whether the books addressed religion, mathematics, botany, astronomy, etc etc. We have Christianity to thank for the Dark Ages in Europe and the Arabs for preserving as much of the ancient knowledge as they did, knowledge that eventually triggered the Renaissance.

(A YouTuber speaks of Destiny & Creation and I:)

There is no Destiny for destiny or fate or anything you wish to call it, has no use or need for free will. An afterlife is something that you have chosen to believe in without any proof whatsoever. But that is the very definition of faith: belief in the absence of proof. Since in the Christian religion salvation is a matter of faith, proof is anathema to salvation. This is why God will not provide concrete, existential, proof of His existence. Should God do that, manifest Himself in the reality of our world, everyone on Earth would KNOW that God exists. In the face of knowledge belief becomes irrelevant, for knowledge transcends mere belief. And with the exit of belief from the stage, faith becomes unnecessary and that is just another way of saying that faith is irrelevant. These are dominoes. With faith neutered the entire Plan of Salvation would be revealed like the small man with the big voice who had been hidden by the curtain. God would have to create a new game to play.

                      (And they blah blah blah)

 Have you ever been introduced to the concept of critical thinking? Or do you spend your vacations in a creationist theme park in Florida admiring the dioramas of Adam and Eve sitting in their saddles atop dinosaurs, just riding around taking in the scenery? And that quotation from Romans? "…what can be known about God.…" It's a phrase with grammar, syntax and no content. So, what CAN be known about God? The only answer provided is that the undefined "what" can be clearly seen by those who have already been indoctrinated by their cult as to what to see when there is nothing to see. What to hear when there is no sound. To internalise what their leaders teach them and to attribute those "teachings" to the central deity of just another mystery cult in a part of the world that was rife with them. The basic tenets of this new cult had been part of and central to religions all over the eastern half (more or less) of the Mediterranean for thousands of years, right down to details such as a lowly birth accompanied by signs and portents, performing miracles, coming to a judgment, execution, resurrection after the passage of three days, finally joining the great powers that exist outside of time in some spiritual plane until the Cosmic Egg Timer rings in the end of the age. From Egypt, across the crescent, the Seleucids and then north and west through Greece, to the Balkans and the north shore of the sea. Everywhere, gods of different names, variations in rituals but the same patterns in the core beliefs and origin stories. A large part of our world allows for freedom of religion, so believe whatever turns your crank or soothes your soul. Just don't fall into your own navel and imagine that you are practicing a religion that is unique or the first in anything. The ministers and rabbi under whose tutelage I studied were both very learned and devout practitioners and leaders within their own faiths. They had the most open minds towards this potentially divisive topic and never suffered from cognitive dissonance when current archaeology or forensic linguistics generated differences between science and holy books. The holy books were originally written by humans, were copied by hand from the time of the Pharaohs to the time of Gutenberg (roughly). Education is a truly liberating experience.

At the tolling of the bell of our day, while I find both theology and psychopathy intriguing, neither troubles me as I am a solipsist and I find it strangely comforting to know that when I die so does everything else.

The Will to Kill

Here we march

From front to rear

Our crashing boots

Disguise our fear

Bayonets honed hours ago 

Flash and shimmer 

With death's glow

Soon through flesh and 

Fat and guts they'll go 

Biden's European Debut

Biden: "In other words we must maintain and expand the reach of democracy by force." That is a translation of the core of Biden's speech. It is noteworthy that the first people the President spoke to were the soldiers who man but one base in the world spanning American military empire. They may well have to depend on that empire considering China is leading a multinational effort to expand the global infrastructure network in order to facilitate trade. The US is not involved and that may come back to bite them in a big way in the future. One American talking point that's an obvious lie is the narcissistic claim that the USA is the "best" country in the world. About the only field that the US does excel in is in their capacity to shape the world into their desired form through war or the threat of it. They never let an opportunity to advertise their military slip through their fist. They also hold the record for "interventions," the usual result of which topples a democratically elected socialist government and replaces it with an extremely right-wing authoritarian dictator. The only reason that the US joined in the battle against the Nazis in WWII was their fear that the Nazis might build an empire larger than the one that America hoped to build for themselves.

                   •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

"Biden's speech" is the first one he gave when he landed in Germany for some meetings including (concluding, actually) one with Putin. Let's hope Biden doesn't start WWIII. It would not be a bad idea at all if American presidents learned and practiced playing chess before they meet with their Russian counterparts.

The Water Wars

Canada has never been a pro-nuclear weapons country but it's been too long since long term planning has been done. If we do not get a strong and effective grip on climate change, Canada should put safeguards in place against US invasion intended to gain control of the supplies of fresh water.

The USA is blind to its own environmental crimes. For generations they have been emptying a massive and critical South-Western aquifer in large part to maintain golf courses growing in a desert. The standard answer to "why" (do this) is "because we can." All's fair in love, war and greed. Just imagine spraying a desert continuously for decades to keep unnatural lawns growing where they should not exist and then bleating out "why me?" when you complain that the faucets of LA are dry. Self awareness is not an American strength. Science has been warning about the draining of that great aquifer for a long time. It took over 100,000 years to create and yet humans have managed to bring its end into view in (very) approximately 100 years.

Back to Canada and the coming Water Wars. That Canada could not prevent a US invasion is obvious. The only way to prepare for an attempt to divert Canadian fresh water supplies southwards (where they would still be watering golf courses in oceans of sand) would be to make the water undesirable. Nuclear weapons, big ones, should be placed at intervals throughout the Great Lakes and sunk into the glaciers that provide meltwater from north of Vancouver and down through the interior of BC. If the US armed forces come for the water of The Great White North, at the push of a button, there will be no water left that would be worth the name.

Ain't the future, or at least speculating about the future, fun? I'm sure that all kinds of plans already exist on shelves in deep locked rooms. This one (which I name "H2-No") is merely one more and it doesn't even call for any technology that doesn't already exist. Simple yet effective.

Real (Israeli) Estate

When you speak about Israeli internal and foreign policy, you don't have to look very deeply to see that the Israelis learned a lot from their WWII oppressors in Europe, the Nazi Party. Israel treats the Palestinians as Jews were treated by the Nazis, though not to the same extent. Yet. And for every injustice that Israel commits against a Palestinian, behind them stands their "silent partner," the USA, keeping Israel flush with funds and the materiel of war. The first step towards peace in the Middle East is closing the tap on the bottomless well of US instruments of death that Israel has been satiating itself on for far too long.

The British were in large part responsible for creating Israel in ancient and partly mythic land in the Middle East when the most logical and reasonable location for Israel would have been on land carved out of Germany. That would have been justice for the Jews and it would also have been a wiser solution for the problems poorly resolved by the Treaty of Versailles. Israel would have been built on fertile soil taken from those who would have murdered them all and, the Middle East would never have been turned into a bomb with a very short fuse.

(Addendum)

Israel should not exist, at least not in the Middle East. After WWII, Israel should have been carved out of Germany. Today Israel should be treated like South Africa while the sanctions were in place to try to end apartheid. And make no mistake, Israel treats the Palestinians like the South Africans treated their black population. The US should stop arming the Israelis and enabling their crimes against humanity. Germany was (arguably) an atheist nation under the Nazis. Israel is a state run by Jewish Nazis. And every time the USA has a Republican administration they are in the same condition. Do the Democrats behave any differently? Time has blurred the line between the two parties making the topic suitable for very juicy debate. Something that cannot be argued is that the Palestinians got buggered in 1949 when Israel was shoehorned into the Middle East onto land they had a mythical connection to, destabilising the entire region. They may just as well have established Israel in Atlantis.

New World Christianity

The US isn't a loony bin it's a loony zoo. One of the major developments in our conception of government was the separation of Church and State and that is how most of the Western world operates. But not America. Watch their news, their rituals and especially their Presidential inaugurations. You still see that hand on/swear by the Bible thing. Becoming President while being a Catholic is still very newsworthy. Politicians at any level reveal in interviews that when they had a major decision to make, they first spent time in intense prayer (no doubt while shedding tears of blood). That doesn't even make THEOLOGICAL sense! If the Universe runs according to the plan of an invisible old man in the sky, future events are already set. What do you think your prayer will accomplish? Do you expect to CHANGE GOD'S MIND?? Puh-Leeeze! Still, praying politicians get their airtime, especially if they're Protestant Evangelicals. It wasn't a ship full of Hindus who landed at Plymouth Rock seeking freedom to worship as they would. It was a ship full of adherents to one particular sect of Protestant Christians. There were piles of these sects who often only differed on the interpretation of one sacrament. Their time was one of the greatest expressions of Christian anal-retentiveness since the 3rd century. No wonder that their concept of democracy was as bent as it came to be.